I have a confession to make. Once or twice in the dying days of the last government, a thought crossed my mind that I am not proud of. As scandal followed scandal, setback upon setback, and plot merged into plot, I looked across the Commons and wondered something that no Tory hack should ever admit to: how bad could Labour really be?
I’d only been 10 when they last left office, shouting at Newsround whenever Gordon Brown’s face appeared. I had half-memories of illegal wars, gold being sold, financial crisis, and something to do with NHS IT. Since then, I’d been reliant on the folk wisdom of my elders to keep my faith that however crap the Tories were, Labour would be worse. Telegraph leaders were holy writ.
But I wasn’t the only one with doubts. Might Labour solve the housing crisis? Could Wes Streeting slay those NHS sacred cows that no Tory could? Yes, they might bung VAT on private school fees. But at least they seem calmer. At least they’re different. Rachel Reeves worked at the Bank of England! Could I? Dared I?
A quick examination of the personalities and policies of our future masters soon convinced me of my folly. I feel my election day prediction has been pretty accurate: this Labour government is the same, but worse, as its Tory predecessor, openly mendacious where we were just incompetent and cowardly. It has no redeeming feature (except, perhaps, the Number 10 kitten).
That is not something that could not be said of our fourteen years in power. Whatever Conservatives made of Brexit – folly, wasted opportunity, surprisingly inconsequential – or the five leaders we cycled through, all tended to have one point of agreement: that our education reforms, spearheaded by Michael Gove and Nick Gibb, had been a great success.
A sympathetic take on David Cameron’s government treats it as aiming to complete Margaret Thatcher’s public sector reforms, barely just begun once she went full Gloriana. The 2010-2014 education initiatives were the only ones to stick. NHS reorganisation was toxic and temporary; Universal Credit’s noble aims floundered against our deep national urge to be paid to do nowt.
Underlying the various policies lay a simple philosophy: the rejection of the Left’s soft bigotry of low expectations, greater freedom for teachers to innovate in a framework of accountability, and a trust in those evidence-based methods, grounded in cognitive science, already working across the world, over tried and failed “progressive” delusions about “child-centred” approaches.
Knowledge and phonics were in; the dead hand of Whitehall and local authorities were out. Tony Blair’s academisation programme was boosted. Over 80 per cent of secondary schools and 40 per cent of primary schools are now academies, with the freedom to vary from the national curriculum, pay good teachers more, and recruit from the independent sector and overseas.
The results spoke for themselves – A*s across the board. 90 per cent of schools are now judged “good” or “outstanding” by Ofsted, compared with 68 per cent in 2010. In just over a decade, England went from 21st to 7th in the PISA league table for Maths, 19th to 9th for reading, and 11th to 9th for Science.
As Neil O’Brien details in an excellent Substack (to which this TD is a tribute act), that success was rendered even more remarkable by comparisons with the doggedly “progressive” approaches of Scotland and Wales. Attainment tumbled far behind that of England. The SNP and Labour governments chose to pull their countries out of rankings to save themselves embarrassment.
All in all, a comprehensive – no pun intended – record of achievement. Even with the sad impact of Boris Johnson’s lockdowns on the closing of the disadvantage gap we had managed pre-2020, this was a clear Good Thing that even the most myopic Labour government couldn’t avoid.
Right? Guys?
Alas. We hadn’t reckoned on Bridget Phillipson.
Amongst stiff competition, she is the most blinkered, destructive, and downright dangerous minister in Labour’s Cabinet of calamities. Six months in, and it is clear that she intends to not only undo our successful policies but every worthwhile reform of the last three decades, including of Labour’s last government. Even Ed Miliband is just doing what we were doing with more gusto.
Today sees the second reading of her Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill. For a piece of legislation designed to re-establish every shattered “progressive” shibboleth, it is far more reactionary than anything we managed in office – the Bourbon approach to educational reform.
It curbs academies’ freedoms to diverge from the national curriculum and very pay. It reverses the presumption in favour of free schools – academies run by independent trusts – handing powers over opening, closing, and expanding schools back to local authorities. Funding for new free schools has been halted. New teachers will be required to have Qualified Teacher Status (QTS).
Ministerial micromanagement is in; local innovation is out. As O’Brien highlights, ministers will have sweeping new powers to interfere with everything from complaints processes to school jumpers. QTS requirements will further exacerbate the pre-existing shortage of teachers Labour hoped to tackle by affecting more than twice as many current teachers as they hope to hire.
Two forces drive Phillipson’s agenda: a desire for uniformity, and spite. She hates tall poppies. As Iain Mansfield has pointed out, “Labour has always been the enemy of excellence”. But her aim is vandalism. By forcing all state schools to teach the national curriculum whilst imposing VAT on their private counterparts, she aims to bring as many pupils as possible under her aegis.
What’s more, the curriculum is being overhauled by Becky Francis. An educationalist – a word that makes me shudder – who has condemned the “obsession with academic achievement” of previous governments and called setting children by ability “ symbolic violence”, the aim seems to be reduce time on English, Maths, and Science, in favour of art, “creativity”, and self-flagellation.
The sudden end to a £4 million fund for teaching Latin embodied the Phillipson spirit: a petty disdain for anything stinking of aspiration. She couldn’t bring herself to praise the hugely successful, if idiosyncratic, Michaela Community School from the floor of the Commons. Her worthy support for reducing post-Covid absenteeism comes after her party’s shrill support for lockdowns.
She is abolishing Ofsted’s one-word judgements, making it harder for parents to judge whether a school is up to scratch, and removing the requirement that bad schools are turned into academies, which has done so much work in turning around dozens of previous sink schools, as Gibb makes clear.
She is in hoc to the unions, who hate anything that shows up bad teachers or failing schools, to the educationalists, who want their Rousesseauean nonsense pumped into pupils, and to civil servants, who are being empowered to stick their noses into schools that we once fought so hard to get them out of. Phillipson knows best – parents, innovative teachers, and the OECD can get lost.
But what can we do? Gove and Gibb are out of the Commons, even if the former is now mightily ensconced at The Spectator. O’Brien is a very able deputy to Laura Trott, but the pair of them can’t overhaul Labour’s massive majority. One hopes that Pimlico Journal’s suggestion that Phillipson might be chopped proves right. But until then, she has free rein.
The truth is that after the initial successes, we took our eyes off the education ball. Gove was reshuffled out. Gibb returned as Schools Minister on multiple occasions, but under a revolving door of chiefs, culminating in the farce of not only five Secretaries of State in a year, but three in three days. The New Schools Network has been rolled up. Rishi Sunak’s big ideas go unlamented.
Our interest in public sector reform ended on 24th June 2016. With the exciting news that Kemi Badenoch might soon be taking off her headphones, putting down the Clash of Clans, and cracking on with her policy reviews, we can engage in the detailed work of deciding what we will want to do in the five or so ministries that Nigel Farage grants us as his junior coalition partner in 2029.
Until then, we can only sit on the sidelines and mourn as Phillipson goes about hobbling children’s chances. Six months in, and I will never again doubt just how abysmal a Labour government will be. One hopes this will be the last one, unless Phillipson’s real intention is to cultivate a next generation sufficiently credulous to one day vote these sour vandals back in.